Religions in most parts of the world are not only protected, but receive subsidies. Are we doing a disservice - and playing into Scientology's hands - by calling them a religion?

I think it would be better to label them as as a ponzi scheme, corrupt business, cult, etc. There may be more laws on our side to stop this organization from being as popular and powerful as it is.

when I was doing some research into scientology i found nothing but dirt on them and this exert is only the tip of the ice burg.
Scientology is most certainly NOT a religion. In fact, one of the only reasons they enjoy "tax exempt status" on religious ground in the United States is because they bullied the IRS into a "deal" through extremely aggressive barratry (which is the offense of persistently instigating groundless lawsuits) against the IRS & IRS officials, and arranged to drop all 2,500 frivolous lawsuits only when an "agreement" was reached. In addition, Scientology's lawyers hired private investigators to dig up any "dirt" on IRS agents which was then used to blackmail or publicly smear all "vulnerable" agents. It was an all-out WAR that Scientology had waged against the IRS, and was even described as such by Scientology's "CEO", David Miscavige, in his 1993 speech to the International Association of Scientologists

Is scientology even growing? I know that most of there image comes from lawsuits, PR, and Tom Cruise but is it even making any, or at least some, headway in gaining new members? My view would be that if they are mostly noise with little body then it would be best to let them die by not giving them any light of day.